Hillary Clinton talks ed at Jeb Bush-backed event

Hillary Clinton took the stage at a Jeb Bush-organized conference on education Monday, calling for increased access to schooling around the world during a high-profile event that political observers combed for clues about a possible 2016 match-up between the pair.

It’s the second time that Bush, a former governor of Florida, and Clinton, a former secretary of state, have been part of the same event in the last six months. The first was in Philadelphia, where Bush, chairman of the National Constitution Center, gave Clinton a Liberty Medal in her first year out of the State Department.

The Globalization of Higher Education conference was put together by Bush and former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, who’s worked with Clinton in the past.

Clinton praised Bush as someone “who really focused on education during his time as governor in Florida, and who has continued that work with passion and dedication in the years since.”

But Clinton, speaking without notes and not appearing to look at a teleprompter, talked for more than 30 minutes about the need to increase access to quality education, including through community colleges or vocational schools. Her remarks struck themes similar to her comments during the Clinton Global Initiative University in Arizona over the weekend.

“We’re living in what I like to call the participation age,” Clinton said, employing a phrase she’s used in recent months as she’s given speeches at college campuses and elsewhere.

She used the example of Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman on her way to school. She survived the attack, and Clinton pointed to her story as a case that highlighted the need to allow women and girls to fully participate in society.

“When they couldn’t shut up Malala because she (tried to) speak for herself, they tried to kill her,” Clinton said.

She pointed to how she ended up at Yale Law School, retelling a story about how officials at Harvard said they didn’t think they needed “any more women. Well, I was speechless, but it made my decision…easier.”

These days, Clinton added: “Somebody might think it, but they wouldn’t be so politically incorrect as to say it.”

But she also noted that when to comes to education, it’s important to “make sure the commitment is deep and broad and not just narrow. Not just for people at the top.”